Speaking of which... I've been working on Easter cards. I've been experiencing crises the last 3 Christmases (don't tell me you're surprised! c'mon! it's my life! what did you expect? get real!) So I finally decided it looked like maybe I might be able to take a shot at getting out Easter cards. I think I didn't order enough so I might have to either pare down my list or go out and buy more cards. The thing is, though, that it's hard to find Christian Easter cards and I ordered these through a mail order company. So I probably would jusr order another box of cards.
Right now I'm writing to one of my Russian friends who hasn't heard from me in eons and if you think my migraine affects my English you should see my Russian! Oh, man, I just can't hardly write Russian letters - that's bukvi - as in alphabet letters. Uzhas! Kashmar! Katastroph! Okay, maybe I'm overdoing it just a bit, but it's pretty hard to deal with. I'm at least able to think in Russian reasonably well. It's just that I can't get my words down on paper. So it might be easier to record an audio message and send it along with the card thereby sidestepping the writing problem altogether, except for signing the card and addressing the envelope, of course. But no, I have to do things the hard way. I wonder if she has a computer.... She most likely does at work if nothing else.
But back to the text...
***
The next and last perspectives we're going to look at are "Structural and Psychodynamic Perspectives."
"Culture may also be regarded as the expression of unconscuous psychological processes. This view of culture forms the foundation of the structural anthropology of Levi-Strauss. It is also present in the work of organization theorists who are developing psychodynamic approaches to organizational analysis... From this point of view, organizational forms and practices are understood as projections of unconscious processes and are analyzed with referece to the dynamic interplay between out-of-awareness processes and their conscious manifestation." (p. 351)
This is just an introduction so I'm not going to say much here, but first of all remember that we're discussing "root metaphors," so here the root metaphor for organizational culture is that it is psychodymanic or that it is an expression of unconscious psychological processes.
I think that the Vienna mission would, to a great extent have liked this definition because it might not have liked people to think too much about it's culture and be overly conscious of the nuances of it as I was prone to be, or they might find issues that might not sit too well with them. They were theologians, after all, and if they really knew and understood what was going on or they decided that the reasoning behind something was less than sufficient, then they could become dissatisfied or even, heaven forbid, start digging even further for answers to questions they might have.
So I can see that the Vienna mission top leadership might well have liked this perspective - keeping everything tucked nice and neatly in the unconscious realm. But let's move on and see what else we can learn about this perspective.
***
"According to Levi-Strauss, the 'structures' [as in 'structural anthropology' - my note] solve problems, problems with symbols, ideas or categories, problems with the application of these symbols, ideas and categories in the social world, and problems with the applications of the applications... If this approach to culture were applied to the study of organizations we could ask, What problems are solved by such persistent patterns in organizational arrangements as hierarchy.?...
From this perspective most organizational analysis would be criticized for being too limited in scope." (p. 352)
This is disappointing. It looks like this perspective has practically nothing to do with the individual (except as a part of the whole), but looks mainly at the whole, the organization en toto. So it looks at how the organization as a whole, addresses symbols and the like.
Let's move on and see if there's any potential for recovery of this perspective for helpfulness to me.
***
"The organization theorists working from the psychodynamic perspective and contributing to the development of a transformational organization theory share a concern for reconstituting social science inquiry so that it embraces a more complex vision of human nature, one that integrates unconscious processes with the more obvious concious processes. Basic to this work is the belief in 'the existence of a deep underlying structure built into the ordering capacities of the mind, and (the suggestion) that it is these capacities in which the 'psychic unity of mankind' consists." (p. 353).
So, if the structural anthropology perspective isn't a very good fit or very helpful in explaining my Vienna experiences, maybe the psychodyamic perspective is somehowat more helpful.
So let's dissect this a bit. The basic activity here (besides sharing a concern "for reconstituting....") is the development of transformational organizational theory. So theorists want their theory to influence the broader transformation organizational theory. That is they want "deep underling structure to build into the ordering capacities of the mind... intregrated with the more obvious conscious processes to be part of the transformational organizational theory.
Now, I think that this is something the Vienna mission administration could have lived with. Based on my interactions with the top management (both in the USA and in Vienna, including the H.R. director), I think they would not be completely inept at using this method.
I hope you get the picture here. In addition to organizational change you also have routine personnel, management, and socialization processes. In any case, the organization consisted of individuals with unconscious processes and "the more obvious conscious processes." These needed to be integrated with each other... and integrated with the group... and it was management's responsibility to see that they were integrated. In the case of the Vienna mission, which was a total institution, pretty much 100% conformity was expected.
For those who passed socialization and were fully accepted into the group, these then socialized others, etc., they internalized the group values and norms (which doesn't necessarily happen in all regular jobs). But in the Vienna mission case, the individuals in the mission came to embody the "psychic unity," if you will, (along with requisite norms and values) that bound them to the mission.
Can you see how the Vienna mission might have been interested in this and may have used and / or even misused it? Since they had virtually no oversight (I've addressed that issue more than once - see keyword accountability), it would have been very easy for them to abuse this. And if you think all those seminarians on staff would have held them accountable, you are very, very naive, indeed. (See keywoord accountability.)
***
That's all I'm going to discuss in this article. All that's left of it is the conclusion, but there's nothing new there, so we'll start a new article next time.
